Please don't spend money on this.

not as good as all the hype

Just so...so bad

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

many motifs to see this film. first, for the African images. for the theme. for the cast. and, sure, for Ava Gardner. she is the axis of this story of adventure, love and self definition. she is the force who gives to a film like many others with the same location and the same variation of story , seduction, splendid nuances, great senses of the choice who seems be impossible. Clark Gable does his exemplar work. Grace Kelly is the snow flake , fragile, complex and almost a graceful silhouette , perfect for the Hitchcock universe but, in this case, only a precious jewel.

In John Ford's "Mogambo", a remake of Victor Fleming's "Red Dust" from 1932, Clark Gable (who also starred in the Fleming film) plays a "great white hunter" – his character even uses the term, minus the adjective "great", in a disparaging self-description – who has a thing first for Kelly, a worldly young woman (Ava Gardner) stranded at his safari camp and then, shortly after, falls hard for Mrs. Nordley(Grace Kelly), the wife of one of his safari clients (Donald Sinden).It's rather unusual to find a remake of a film in which the lead is the same as in the original – Sean Connery in "Thunderball" and "Never Say Never Again" springs to mind, thanks in part to the memorable clue that is the title of the remake - but when it does happen, it's an interesting situation for the viewer. Obviously, comparisons will inevitably occur, so let's clear the big plate off the table right away and agree that "Mogambo", much like "Never Say Never Again", is not as good a film as its original version. At all. The secondary characters are, in general, underdeveloped – Eric Pohlmann and Philip Stainton are simply clichés – and, as his would-be primary love interest, Grace Kelly is weak. On the other hand, it is worth watching, particularly if you've seen the earlier film, and not only to see how the legend of Gable, accrued over his career, weighs on that same actor's shoulders in this updated African take on the classic love triangle. Ava Gardner is distracting and light, not the incredible sexual force that Jean Harlow was in the first film, and there's a wonderful sequence involving gorillas that makes all of the rest of the stock footage from wildlife shots look Tarzan-amateur; in fact, the quasi-Tarzan feel that runs through most of the film carries its own irony, given that Gable had apparently been in the running for the role of the Ape Man that Weissmuller landed in 1932.For me, this film is a special treat because of a terrific back-story that my Galician friend told me about it. During the Franco years in Spain, there was heavy censorship of film themes and content, which was often made easier by the practice of dubbing rather than using subtitles. When this film was distributed into Spain, because the idea of adultery was unacceptable to the dictatorship, the theme of "Mogambo" was changed, just a little, in the dubbing. Mrs Nordley, the wife, was quietly and quickly changed, thanks to a few alterations in the dialogue, into Mr. Nordley's sister. Apparently, it was less uncomfortable for the powers in charge to watch scenes ostensibly between a brother and sister that were therefore fraught with incestuous tension than to imagine for a moment that a wife might stray from her marital path.

In Africa, a hunter (Clark Gable) who catches animals for zoos has two women come for safari; one is a worldly, nightclubbing dame (Ava Gardner) and the other a demure, Bostonian wife (Grace Kelly). Both find the macho man irresistible.I like the three stars a lot, but I didn't care much for this movie. Gable's character is a silly caricature of rugged manliness; he growls orders, drinks a lot, and grabs women too roughly. He was only 52, but looked much older and was past his Rhett Butler glory days. Kelly is good but seems to be trying oh-so-hard to be stern and matronly with much lip-pouting and overdoing the accent. Gardner plays her usual sexy, sadder-but-wiser part, but her dialogue is phony and stagy, her character overblown and never believable.While the animal-catching and scenes of marginalized natives are terribly out of fashion and off-putting, the location scenery is beautiful, especially filmed in brilliant Technicolor. With two gorgeous women fighting for Clark Gable, I imagine the movie was quite sensational when it came out in 1953, but now I found it corny and silly.

This is a remake of "Red Dust" from the 1930s and Clark Gable plays the same role -- the white professional guide through the African jungle who also collects animals for zoos and circuses. He's hired by a naive anthropologist and his wife, Kelly, to take them into the bush and shoot movies of gorillas and trap a baby gorilla to study back home.Gable's dalliance with tough but good-natured Ava Gardner is interrupted but he doesn't mind, once he gets an eyeful of the delicate blond Grace Kelly. She's overwhelmed by the cloud of pheromones that follows Gable about and he, in turn, decides that this time it's for keeps.But then there's that awkward business of letting the wimpy husband in on their plans. And that noisome Ava Gardner is always hanging around, all knowingly, making wisecracks about the new love affair. I mean, it gets racy too. Their truck passes a male elephant who trumpets and uncurls his trunk straight out into the air. "Reminds me of somebody I know," cracks Gardener.In the end, Gable comes to his senses, tricks Kelly into loathing him, and marries the woman he was truly meant to be with, the one who is as resilient and durable as he is.It wasn't an easy shoot. Director Ford was beginning to feel his age. Gable insisted on going off to hunt big game. Ford thought it was dangerous and stupid. Frank Sinatra, married to Ava Gardner at the time, showed up on location and everyone expected him to act like the Chairman of the Board -- "Here, pal, here's fifty; go take a hike." Instead, at Ford's request, he was put to use making spaghetti for the crew. Gable had been through much tribulation since "Red Dust", twenty years earlier, and had begun drinking, but he'd help up well, considering.Grace Kelly should have been right for the part of the naive young wife. She looks appealing enough and seems frangible, as if anyone could break one of her long bones just be pressing it too hard, but she's allowed to overact. Ava Gardner never looked more attractive or sexier. Jean Harlow brought a note of stronger vulgarity to the role. Gardner seems a little too nice, despite the acidulous dialog.The movie is entertaining and colorful but seems oddly dated. Every movie about Africa is compelled to give us shots of African animals that, I suppose, a hundred years earlier were still novel. Yes, that's a cheetah, alright. We saw a National Geographic Special about cheetahs just last week. Fastest mammals on earth, y'know? They're no longer gape worthy. They have to play some part in the story if we're going to pay attention any longer.And I don't know why people don't leave gorillas and other primates alone. There aren't that many of them left. We're destroying them through habitat destruction and poaching. Why would anyone want to point a high-powered rifle at a great ape and shoot it dead? They don't do anything but eat fruit and vegetables. I wonder if humans might have more compassion for gorillas if they saw them naked and shaved, as I did when I studied comparative primatology. The male appendage is positively tiny compared to ours. Well, that probably wouldn't make us pause before killing them anyway. We'll stop when there are no more left.Anyway, it's a satisfying movie that ought to interest the family, assuming the kids don't grasp the symbolic significance of elephant trunks. "Red Dust" -- studio-bound as it is -- is still better.